Abstract

Because my paper was often metaphorical, some participants on the symposium expressed puzzlement about my literal meaning, especially about the passage from Mailer. Here are ten literal "theses" that the paper either argues for, implies, or depends on.1. What metaphor is can never be determined with a single answer. Because the word has now become subject to all of the ambiguities of our notions about similarity and difference, the irreducible plurality of philosophical views of how similarities and differences relate will always produce conflicting definitions that will in turn produce different borderlines between what is metaphor and what is not. We thus need taxonomies, not frozen single definitions, of this "essentially contested concept."